Christmas is a time to think of others – especially after the year we’ve just had

As we get closer to Christmas I often find myself – as is natural this time of year – thinking that I am not an especially good person. No, really – don’t all protest at once. I lead a pretty selfish life. I can be impatient and sarcastic at the best of times.

I don’t really get involved in campaigning beyond bouts of ranting and sniping on social media. I sign petitions, and then forget about them. I joined a march to remain in the EU once, but that was mostly because it happened to coincide with my route from the Tube to my meeting. I sort of jog alongside activism, rather than running directly into the path of the horse, so to speak.

And then something happened that really got my blood up. Something I couldn’t just tweet about and then wander off to make a sandwich. On the evening of the 21 October this year the government voted not to extend its scheme to subsidise meals for children living in food poverty into the Christmas holidays.

Due to the remarkable pressure from footballer Marcus Rashford, they had grudgingly agreed to do it for the summer, but apparently making sure hungry children were also fed for Christmas felt like a step too far for our esteemed leaders. I went to bed that night feeling sick with anger.

I was hoping my rage might have dissipated by the following morning, so I could go about my day happily without really having to do anything about it. But if anything, it had got worse. I made my coffee noisily, banging things around. How could they do this? How could the cost of feeding children, negligible when compared with all the money they had wasted giving PPE contracts to local publicans, possibly be too much to shoulder? I kept replaying an image of a small child, stomach empty; parents frightened, nothing in the bank and no one to ask for help. I felt ill with it. I couldn’t eat my boiled egg. And I love boiled eggs.

I thought: "I want to give some money to someone, somewhere to help get food to these children. What if Marcus Rashford set up some sort of fund this morning for people to give a bit of money to? I’d give a bit of money to that right now".

I tweeted this very idea to Marcus himself. I sat for a while, awaiting his response. Then it occurred to me that on the morning after he had been rebuffed in his attempt to get the government to feed vulnerable children, he was probably quite busy. Then the dread thought came to me: "Katy, why don’t YOU do something instead? Why should it all be on Marcus? Why don’t YOU set up a fund?"

Oh God. No. Set up a fund? This felt suspiciously like direct action. I am a writer. I am highly averse to direct action. I prefer to stare out the window for a bit to see if it develops into an idea worth pursuing, until it’s time for lunch and I can think about something else. But there was an urgency building. The voice inside was persisting: "Set up the fund. Set it up now. Do it".

Reader, I did it. It took 15 minutes to create a Hungry Children Christmas Fund on the website GoFundMe. I posted the link on Twitter. I had very tentatively set the first target at £10,000, thinking if it raised even a fifth of that, at least it would be something. Well, we were through that in two hours. I raised the target to £30,000. We were through that mid-afternoon. I raised it to £50,000. It reached that before I went to bed. Within four days, the total stood at £100,000. I was astonished. And a bit tearful.

Most of the donations were in amounts of £5, £10, £20. People were messaging me to say they would themselves go without something that week to give £5. It seemed everyone wanted to help. The final total, which eventually stood at £102,000 was split between three charities: Fare Share, The Trussell Trust and Magic Breakfast. And it was my honour to transfer to them, on behalf of all those who donated, just under £34,000 each. 

Speaking of donations, readers of The Independent have also given me cause to get misty-eyed having helped raise more than £10m for the Help The Hungry campaign

I’m not going to pretend I’m now a keen activist, or a campaigner, or that I am going to start volunteering. I’m still not an especially good person. But one thing I do now know for sure, and I feel exceptionally good about this, is that if you ask British people to help when children are going hungry, they really will step up. And I’m glad there are so many people who are better than me out there, doing this work every single day.

God Bless them, every one.